Naked Prey

19

They were stuck.

They'd spent the day before tramping around Broderick, talking with housewives and Calb employees, getting nowhere. The pitch Lucas had made to the sheriff's deputies hadn't produced anything yet, and Lucas began to wonder if he might be able to devise a way to pull the killer in. The problem was a lack of bait. There was Letty, but he couldn't use her. Might have been able to use her if she was a fifty-year-old asshole who'd brought the trouble on herself, but not an innocent teenager.

He worried a little that he'd even bothered to think of reasons not to use her…

He was sitting on his bed at the Motel 6, reading a Star Tribune story about the attack on the West house, and waiting for Del to knock. The TV was tuned to the Weather Channel, because they'd heard a rumor from the night clerk that snow was coming in. Coming in somewhere. When he looked out the window after he got up, there were a few fat flakes drifting around, but nothing serious. He was rereading the fire story when the room phone rang.

Ruth Lewis: "The sheriff called. They want to bury Martha West tomorrow and I'm going to bring Letty back up. I wanted to let you know-the sheriff said they'll provide security at the funeral."

"She can travel? Letty?"

"Your wife says so. Your wife is the admitting physician, by the way. She said you didn't know. She said they'll need Letty back here in a week, but that she could travel tomorrow."

"Has anybody figured out where she could stay?"

"Yes. She'll stay with me. I have lots of room right now, and we get along."

"All right. I wish I'd known about the funeral. I might have tried to push it a couple of days."

"I don't know about that," Lewis said. "The sheriff said the arrangements had been made… and that's what I know."

"Come and see me when you get up here," Lucas said. "We've got more to talk about."

"Maybe," she said.

Del came by. "We doing Calb?"

"I've got nothing else," Lucas said.

They got in the car and loafed up to Broderick, across the gray landscape, heading for Wolf's Cafe, where they'd found that the pancakes were edible. The snow had gotten heavier, and a North Dakota radio station said there could be four to six inches by evening. There were a half-dozen cars parked outside Cash's house-BCA crime scene guys, the FBI, and at least one deputy sheriff, Lucas guessed.

Wolf's was quiet, with only two other customers, both on stools at the bar, one talking with Wolf about going to Palm Springs, the other eating cherry pie and drinking coffee and eavesdropping. Lucas and Del took the furthest booth so they could talk. Through the window they could see the front of Calb's body shop, and could see people coming and going.

"Hate waiting," Del said. "We're just waiting for somebody to get killed so we've got something more to work with."

"We'd know what we were doing if we could figure out why he went after Letty. If he went after Letty. We're assuming that, but what if he was after Martha? We're thinking it was Letty because we've been hanging around with Letty."

"No, no. We think it's Letty because after he killed Martha, he went after Letty," Del said. "He tried to hunt her down out there, after he killed Martha. Letty says her mother was yelling at her to get out… Martha just got in the way."

Lucas nodded. "Okay. So what does Letty know that makes it necessary to kill her? Must be something."

"Maybe she doesn't know she knows," Del said.

"We'll talk to her again tomorrow. I keep going back to your theory that there can't be two big separate crimes in one small town without them being related, somehow," Lucas said. "We've got two big separate crimes-the drug running and the kidnappings-and they don't seem to be related."

"Could be an exception, I guess," Del said. "But… " He rubbed his chin, sipped at his coffee. "Maybe we ought to get with Ruth, or one of the other women, and do a whole history of how they got here. Why here? How did they get involved with Calb? Can't be just a coincidence that Calb has these ties down to Kansas City car thieves and these women… "

He trailed off, and Lucas said, "What?"

"What, 'what'?"

"Where were you going with that? 'Cause you gotta be right. How did they hook all this together? How did they land on Calb, out here in the middle of the prairie? There's gotta be more to it."

"That cheer you up?"

"Gives us something to think about," Lucas said. "Something to pull at."

Wolf brought the pancakes over, and a couple of minutes later, as they were eating, a black Lexus backed out of the Cash house, rolled south, and pulled into the parking lot next to Lucas's Acura. A white-haired man got out of the driver's side, and a moment later, Jim Green, the FBI agent, got out of the passenger side. Green pointed at Lucas's Acura and said something to the white-haired man, who went back into the Lexus and fished out a briefcase.

They clumped inside and looked around, and Lucas lifted a hand. The two men came down and squeezed into the booth.

"Tom Burke-Lucas Davenport, Minnesota BCA," Green said. "You've already met Del."

"The FBI crew hasn't found anything, any gravesites," Burke said. "We don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed."

Lucas shook his head.

Burke said, "I have some paper that Jim said you may be interested in. When Annie was taken, the kidnappers told us that if we contacted the FBI or any other police agency, they would know, because they had a source inside the FBI. They sent us these papers… " He produced a neatly Xeroxed stack of papers and handed the stack to Lucas. "I took them to my attorney, who had worked with the Justice Department before he went into private practice, and he said they looked authentic. So we paid up, without calling in the FBI. I felt a little foolish even at the time, but I didn't think we could take the chance. We never heard another word from the kidnappers."

Lucas riffled through the stack of papers, and Burke added, "Those aren't the originals. The originals are back home, with the FBI."

"It looks like stuff I've seen from the FBI," Lucas said.

Green said, "Whoever did it had some idea of how the paperwork looks, but it's not quite right. The fonts aren't quite right, the formats aren't quite right. It's like they made them on a computer… "

"Cash and Warr had a computer… "

"Nothing on it but games," Green said. "Not even a word processor. What those are, are supposed memos inside some kind of kidnapping unit. It's all bullshit: the kidnappings they talk about never occurred. It's just good enough to convince Mr. Burke not to talk to the authorities before he paid the money."

"Because we didn't care about the money," Burke said. "One million dollars, in unmarked, nonsequential fifties and hundreds. We thought that if we paid, maybe they wouldn't kill her. It was worth the chance."

"If you didn't care about the money," Del said.

"We didn't. Not too much, anyway." He showed a quick, thin grin, dug into his briefcase and pulled out another stack of Xeroxes. "I gave one of these to Jim. They're checking the bills they got from Deon Cash's house… I understand one of you gentlemen found them."

"Del did," Lucas said. He took the second stack of sheets. They were legal-sized Xeroxes, each showing several fifty- and hundred-dollar bills. "What we did is, we got the money from the casinos, new bills, in stacks of sequential numbers. There were twenty bills in each stack. We Xeroxed all those stacks-the way it broke down, there were eight hundred and fifty of them-and from those, you can figure out all the serial numbers. You've got the top serial number, and the additional nineteen bills follow in order. Then we mixed them all up, so they'd appear to be nonsequential. But you can look at any bill, and tell if it came from the Vegas money."

"Pretty smart," Lucas said. "The money in Cash's place came from you?"

"Don't know yet," Green said. "The money's locked up in the bank, and we had to wait until it opened this morning. Time lock on the safe deposit. There was no great hurry anyway. We've got a guy over there now, looking."

"Did you ever have anything to do with Kansas City, or a Cash family in Kansas City?" Del asked Burke.

"We have nursing homes in the Kansas City area," Burke said. "I own six different chains of nursing homes in Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. But when Jim told me about the Kansas City connection… as part of our public-relations campaigns, we donate money to various hospitals and medical schools for research on age-related illnesses. About a month before Annie was taken, we'd given two million dollars to the University of Missouri medical schools. Our public-relations people tried to get it in all the papers where we have nursing homes. They did very well-I suspect those stories were the proximate cause of Annie's kidnapping."

"Oh, boy," Lucas said.

Del asked, "Where do you have nursing homes in Minnesota? Around here?"

"Yes, in Armstrong, down in Red Lake Falls, Crookston, Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls."

"And there was a story in the Armstrong paper?"

"Yes. I'm afraid so," Burke said. "I have to say that if I'd found out who they were, I wouldn't have done what Mr. Sorrell did, but I understand it, and I applaud it. I wish to God I could have shaken his hand. Now we've got to get this last one, or the last ones. We have to root out all of them."

"Doing our best," Green said. "We'll get them."

"Him," Lucas said. "It's one guy."

"How do you know?" Green asked.

"The feel of the killings. It's one guy." Lucas looked out the window toward Calb's shop. Little bits of icy snow were drifting across the highway.

"Cold up here," Burke said.

They finished eating and were pulling on their coats when Green got a call on his cell phone. They were at the door when Green said, "Hey," and waved them back. They stepped back and he said, "Numbers match. On the ransom money."

Burke had tears in his eyes, but didn't seem to know it.

Lucas put the paper from Burke in the car, and they rolled across the highway to Calb's. Inside, two guys were working on the truck they'd seen before, and it occurred to Lucas that there were too many people for too little truck. He stopped the closest guy. "Is Gene Calb around?"

The guy shook his head. "Can't find him. Should be here. We need the keys for the office."

"Can't find him?" Lucas said.

"No answer at his house. He's always here first," the guy said. "Don't know where he could've got to."

Lucas and Del went back outside, to the Acura, moving fast. "Please, God, let him be at Logan's Fancy Meats."

They sped back toward town, Lucas pushing the Acura hard. The snow was coming down harder now, the flakes a little smaller, but driven by a wind from the northwest. Now it looked serious. Two miles out of Broderick, a car a half-mile in front of them, and coming their way, suddenly showed the flaring red lights of a police roof rack. "Goddamn radar," Lucas said.

It was Zahn, in his patrol car. Lucas continued past him, then pulled to the shoulder, jumped out, and as Zahn swung around in a circle, waved at him. Zahn pulled up and his window rolled down and he said, "I hate to ask."

"Nobody can find Gene Calb," Lucas said. "He's not at work, not answering his phone. We're heading for his house. You know where he lives?"

"Follow on behind me," Zahn said.

They tucked in behind him and rolled down to Armstrong, and Lucas could see him talking on his radio. "Calling the sheriff," Lucas said.

A deputy's car was pulling up outside Calb's house when they arrived. A neighbor across the street stood by his picture window, watching, as they all got out. The deputy asked, "What do you think?"

"Knock on the door," Lucas said. They all trooped up to the stoop, pushed the doorbell, heard it ringing inside. When nothing happened, Lucas knocked and pushed the doorbell again. Del went around to the back, looked in the window on the back door, then returned to the front of the house. "Can't see anything in the kitchen-I think they're just gone."

Zahn walked over to the garage and tried the door. It opened, and he looked inside, then closed the door.

"Both cars here."

"Out for a walk?" Del asked.

Lucas said, "Let's go ask that guy." He nodded across the street, at the neighbor in the picture window. He and Del walked across, and the neighbor met them at the door. He was wearing a blue fleece sweatshirt and had a pipe clamped between large yellow teeth. "Haven't seen them," he said. "What's going on?"

"When did you see them last?"

Puff, puff, thought. "I saw Gloria yesterday evening, when she turned on the lights in the living room. That's about it."

"Haven't seen anybody coming or going?"

"Nope. What'd they do?"

"Nothing that we know of," Lucas said. They looked up and down the street. "They have any friends close by?"

Puff, puff, more thought. "The Carlsons, up in that stone-front house… they'd probably be their best friends. But we're all pretty friendly around here."

"Thanks."

As they were walking away, the man said, "That red Corolla in front of the house. I don't know who that belongs to." He pointed with his pipe. "It's been there all night."

"Yeah?" They stopped to look inside the Corolla, saw a clipboard and what looked like a daily diary on the passenger seat, and in the back seat, two packing boxes of canned food.

"That looks like the stuff the church women take around," Del said. "I saw a Corolla there, too."

"Been here all night?" Lucas tried the car door, and the door popped open. He reached across the seat and picked up the diary. Inside the front cover was a hand-written Katina Lewis.

Lucas showed the diary to Del. "Is that… Ruth Lewis? Or somebody else?"

Del shook his head. "I don't know. And where is she?"

They walked back across the street and talked to the deputy and Zahn. The deputy said, "Katina… she's the other one's sister. She's going with one of our guys. Loren Singleton. She's been sleeping over with him, but he's like a mile from here."

"Give him a ring," Lucas said. To Zahn: "Could you run down to the LEC and talk to the sheriff, and ask him to get a search warrant up here? You'll have to swear that we were looking for Calb for questioning in connection with a crime… which we are."

"On my way."

"Let's go talk to the Carlsons," Lucas said to Del.

Linda Carlson was a good-looking, blond forty-five-year-old whose husband worked as a State Farm agent. She had large eyes, slightly tilted upward, that made her looked sleepy, as though she'd just been rolling around in bed with someone. Lucas saw her and thought, Mmm. "I called over there last night, but didn't get an answer," she said, putting a hand on Lucas's sleeve. She was a toucher, too. "I was kinda surprised that there was nobody home, because I talked to Gloria yesterday afternoon and they weren't planning to go anywhere… " She was wearing a fuzzy angora V-necked sweater and her hand crept up the V until it stopped at her throat, and she said in a hushed voice, "You don't think anything's happened?"

"We're just trying to get in touch," Lucas said.

"I've got a key," Carlson said. "I can go down there anytime… "

Lucas spread his hands-"We can't go in without a search warrant. If you could just take a peek, if you don't think the Calbs would care. All we want to know is that they're okay."

"They wouldn't care. Let me get my coat."

She went to get her coat and Del muttered, "You've got drool dripping out the side of your mouth, marriage-boy."

"Just looking," Lucas said.

Back at the Calbs', the deputy said, "I talked to Loren. He was on duty last night and didn't see Lewis. He said he thought she was coming over before he went on duty, but she never showed up. He called the church and she wasn't there."

"Okay."

Carlson's key was for the back door. She went in, as Lucas, Del, and the deputy waited on the back porch. She called, "Gloria? Gloria? Gene?" She disappeared into the interior of the house, then came back and said to Lucas, "Maybe you better come in."

"What? Are they… "

"Nobody's home," she said. She was nervous, turning pink. "I don't know about these things, but Gloria's a very neat housekeeper… If this… "

She led Lucas to a hallway off the kitchen and pointed down. There was a dark spot on the carpet, about the size of a paper pie plate. Not coffee, not Coke. Heavier than that, crusty-looking.

Lucas squatted next to it, then said, "Please don't touch anything. Keep your hands by your side and carefully walk back out through the door, okay?" He followed her out to the porch and said to the deputy, "Wait out here, okay?" and to Del, "C'mere."

Del followed, and when Lucas showed him the rug, he squatted, as Lucas had, then said, "Yeah." He stood up, went into the kitchen, tore a small sheet of paper towel off a roll by the sink, tapped it under the faucet head to get it damp, then stepped back to the hallway and touched the dark spot with the damp point of the paper towel.

He held it up to Lucas. The towel showed a diluted blood-red. "That's a problem," Del said.

Lucas pulled out his cell phone and dialed the LEC, asked for the sheriff. Anderson came on and he asked, "Have you seen Ray Zahn?"

"He's here now, we're working out a warrant."

"Listen, a friend of the Calbs from down the street had a key and permission to go into the house. She went in, found blood, and invited us in. I don't know the legal aspects of it, but it looks bad. We need that warrant down here right now, before we start pulling the house apart. But we need it now. "

"Ten minutes," Anderson said. "I'll walk it around myself."

Lucas called Green, the FBI agent, told him about the blood. "Send our crime scene guys down here, will you?" Lucas asked. "We may have another scene for him to process."

"Right now," Green said.

Lucas rang off and Del said, "Over here."

He was squatting in a corner of the kitchen, and Lucas stepped over. A pistol shell lay against a molding.

"A.380," Del said.

"Yeah. Goddamnit. Listen, let's do a walk-through. We're okay on that-the blood's fresh enough. Quick trip through the house."

The house was large, but they did the first pass in five minutes. No bodies, but the house had been stirred around. "Closets are halfway cleaned out," Del said. "Lot of stuff gone, and they were in a hurry."

"Whose blood is it, if the Calbs were running?"

"How did they run, if both of their cars are in the garage?"

"Taxi to the airport?"

"Do they have a taxi here? Do they have airplanes that go anywhere?"

"Shit, I don't know."

They were snapping at each other, feeling the pressure. Three people on the line-the Calbs and the church woman, Katina Lewis.

"Where's the goddamn sheriff?"

Anderson arrived ten minutes later-"Couldn't find the judge. He was in, but he was down in the surveyor's office, bullshitting. Took forever to find him."

"We're okay to dig around?"

"Go ahead," Anderson said. "You need more people?"

"I don't know," Lucas said. "The BCA crime scene people are coming down from Broderick. The FBI may be with them… First thing, we've got to figure out if the Calbs are really gone."

"Where's that blood?"

Lucas showed him, and Anderson shook his head. "That's a lot of blood."

"But whose blood is it?" Lucas asked.

Having given the house a quick run-through, they checked the cars. The engines were cold, so they hadn't been used in the past couple of hours. There was nothing in either one of them that helped.

The lead crime scene guy arrived, with one of his subordinates, and with Del and Lucas trailing, they began in the basement and slowly worked their way to the top of the house. The subordinate noticed the strands of wool on the hatchway that led to the space under the eaves.

"They wouldn't hang there forever," he said. "If they were in a hurry, what were they doing up there?"

"Had something hidden?" Del suggested.

They got a chair, and then an ottoman to stack on top of it, and Lucas and Del helped him balance as the crime scene guy stood on top of the ottoman, pushed the hatch up, clicked on his flashlight, and froze. "Oh, Jesus," he said. "Aw, Jesus Christ."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Get me down."

The tech hopped down and Lucas clambered on top of the ottoman. When he stuck his head through the opening, Katina Lewis's face was four inches from his. Her dead eyes looked straight through him and he instantly flashed back to the hanging scene, the dead eyes of Cash and Warr; and he saw the face of the other woman, Ruth Lewis, in this woman.

"Lewis," he told Del. "Just like the other ones."

"Only her?"

Lucas couldn't see past her, but he could see the rest of the area, and there was nothing but pink insulation. "I don't see anyone else. I need to get a little higher… " He grabbed the edges of the hatch, pulled himself up a foot, but didn't have the leverage to get any farther. He could just see over Lewis's body, and there was nothing but insulation. "Nope. I think it's just her."

"I'll get something out on the Calbs," Anderson said. "You think it's Gene doing this?"

"Looks like it," Lucas said. He climbed down off the ottoman and chair. "Whoever it is, he's breaking up-he's going through a psychotic break. If it's Calb, I'd say his wife is in big trouble. He could kill anyone, now."